Andrew Becomes A Hero
by Manchester
Summary: It's postulated that any reality has an equal chance of existing throughout the entire Multiverse, including even the sheer unthinkability of a dimension where Andrew Wells actually saves the day. So kindly suspend your disbelief and read on...
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: If you didn't believe the summary, here's fair warning, people. Considering the total far-fetchedness of this AU story, I've happily taken this as permission to insert into the narrative such gaping plot holes about times, quotes, reactions, characters, and events that you could easily shove the Rock of Gibraltar through all those apertures. Like a good number of the episodes in the later years didn't have these, anyway? Enjoy, laugh, and don't yell at me for this!

* * *

"-you're my hero!"

Buffy Summers gaped at the young man standing before here who'd just finished his fervent declaration to the Slayer previously in a very discouraged mood. Now, in his own weird way, Andrew Wells had given her something else to think about, with the last surviving member of Sunnydale's own would-be super villain group now eagerly watching the blonde woman trying to figure how to properly respond to what he'd just told her.

Unfortunately, Buffy hesitated a bit too long, as Andrew's face abruptly crumbled into awkward humiliation, as he mistakenly thought she'd been offended or had her feelings hurt in some way by his fumbling speech. After all, the former supreme geek of Sunnydale High had done that before a _lot_ of times, having virtually no clue to the proper social interaction with other people despite his genius-level intellect. Hastily turning away before she started yelling at him, Andrew slouched off down the street sidewalk, his shoulders wretchedly slumped.

Buffy opened her mouth to call after Andrew, to then quickly close this as she warily looked around in the night, using her Slayer senses to check out the area. It felt safe, with no Bringers around or any of the First Evil's other minions, proof that Willow's wards that the witch had placed around the neighborhood at Revello Drive were still working. Good, Andrew would be okay until he came back, while Buffy would then return to the house, ready to deal with the situation of the others' low morale.

Nodding firmly to herself, Buffy then sent an appreciative smile after an unknowing Andrew already halfway down the block, turned around with a determined glint in her eye, and she headed to the front door of her home with an actual spring in this woman's step, both of these signs demonstrating the Slayer's improved mood. Unlike a certain young man still shambling away along the sidewalk, lost in his own misery.

Totally preoccupied with his unhappiness, Andrew kept on going, leaving the Summers house far behind and paying no attention at all to his surroundings, as he wandered throughout the deserted streets of Sunnydale. Virtually all of this California city's former population (both human and demon) had left the town in a hurry earlier after they sensed that something really momentous was going to occur soon. That event was probably the only reason that prevented the heedless pedestrian from quickly becoming some vampire's snack for tonight.

Eventually, Andrew's mind cleared, and he looked around in surprise at where he was, an emotion that speedily changed to alarm at finding himself such a long way from the safety of Buffy's home. Then, the young man became truly horror-stricken at seeing where he'd wound up, right in front of the Mears family's house. Andrew's face turned pure white as he stared at the deserted house with its overgrown lawn, that he'd visited numerous times before, when he and Warren and Jonathan….

Andrew moaned in anguish and dropped to his knees on the front sidewalk, to then fall over on his side as he curled up on the ground, arms wrapped around himself, as the murderer of the only true friend he'd ever had burst into tears and kept on sobbing, in throat-tearing wails that drifted throughout the quiet Sunnydale night.

Finally stopping from sheer exhaustion, Andrew rested his cheek against the concrete slab of the sidewalk and stared blankly ahead at the house before him, for how long he never knew. The young man wouldn't have cared the slightest if an entire vampire nest had rushed out of the Mears home and then grabbed him and dragged his body back into their lair to drain his blood down to the very last drop. He deserved that, every bit of such an agonizing death. He'd been so stupid as to believe the First Evil's temptations that had ended up with a knife in Andrew's hand taking the life of… Gulping, Andrew gagged, "Oh, Jonno, I'm _so _sorry!" and he started quietly crying again.

After another immeasurable interval, Andrew Wells lethargically stat up on the sidewalk and absently used his fingers to wipe away the tears and snot from his face, cleaning this off on his pants leg. He remained sitting there, until he eventually thought that maybe he should get up and go back to Buffy's house. Slowly turning his head to glance up and down the empty street, with all the houses lining it dark and abandoned, Andrew had an unexpected question suddenly arise in his mind: *Why?*


	2. Chapter 2

After all, he didn't have to be at Buffy's house, he wasn't wanted there, and he couldn't help the others. Unlike any of them, he wasn't a Slayer, a witch, a Watcher, a Potential, a Key, a vampire, a former vengeance demon, or an ordinary human that still wanted to fight against the First Evil despite losing an eye. Andrew sniffled again, as he mentally ran down the long list of his shortcomings: scared out of his skin, hopeless in any kind of fight, totally unable to tone down the geek references, and irritating everyone with his presence and his ever-ready video camera. Even his former magical ability to summon and control demons was now completely gone, the result of a permanent mental block caused by learning of Warren's torturous death and the resulting months on the run in Mexico, utterly terrified during every second of this that a crazed Willow Rosenberg would find Andrew and do the exact same thing to him.

Frankly, all of them back there would be much better off without him. For one, there'd be some more room in that crowded house, with people there currently living on top of each other. Andrew sighed, and he hugged himself as if for warmth. The odd part was, he'd actually thought about suggesting that the entire household move somewhere else in the city. Yes, he knew Buffy felt safer in her home, and Willow's protective wards actually made this pretty much accurate, but honestly, it just made more _sense_ to relocate to a bigger and more defensible place with the witch again putting up her wards around that location. It wasn't like they couldn't find somewhere like that in a now-empty Sunnydale if they only went out and looked! Not to mention that maybe they could, um, kind of help themselves to some more varied food supplies from deserted stores and warehouses. He was _really_ tired of living on just mac and cheese.

Andrew sighed again. Those ideas might be good ones, but he'd simply never had a chance to present them to anybody. The diverse emotional currents running throughout the entire house and the resulting dramatics made him too confused on exactly who to confide his suggestions. Plus, there were so many people he didn't even dare to approach. Such as Willow. Even though she now tolerated (barely) his presence, the young man sitting on the sidewalk shivered for several moments, as he again thought about what that red-haired witch had done to Warren, deserved or not.

Faith and Anya scared him almost as much. It had also been incredibly difficult to speak to Buffy in the first place, considering what he'd helped the other pair of their villain group do to her over the years. Too, the Prime Slayer simply awed Andrew, making him really nervous concerning talking to that superheroine about leaving her home. If she'd maybe have been a bit more receptive to his speech earlier tonight, he might have risked slipping in his suggestions about improving their current living situation.

A glum Andrew finished off in his mind the rest of their forces. Mr. Giles and Mr. Wood were the only real adults in the house, with their own responsibilities and burdens that had no time for him. The Potentials clearly regarded him as a total dork, and they'd have just laughed in his face if he'd even dared to come near them. (Well, considering how crowded the house was, 'nearer' them would have expressed it better.) Spike the vampire obviously held Andrew well below contempt; that demon had made it evident long ago that he never bothered to even notice that human, much less listen to him.

That left the only two persons in the house that he might have had a chance to present his cautious proposals to and have those people actually think about them. Unfortunately, Dawn was mostly around the Potentials now, and there was the likelihood she'd share their condescending opinion about him. And finally, Xander was still recovering from the loss of his eye to Caleb, something that made Andrew truly reluctant to bother him. Which was in itself a rare show of good manners from the usually thoughtless geek.

Andrew slowly got up from his seat on the sidewalk, and he wondered what to do now. The fact was, he simply didn't have any money, clothes, or transportation that might allow him to flee the city, which made his recent plan to leave Sunnydale totally pointless. So…in the end, he'd just have to return to Buffy's house, where the young man was morosely sure nobody had even noticed he'd been gone. Giving the Mears house one last glance, Andrew turned and started heading down the sidewalk, until he abruptly stopped in his tracks after a few steps. Frowning, Andrew slowly turned back around and he eyed the dark, empty home again.

Why had he come _here _in the first place?


	3. Chapter 3

There was the fact that his own home in Sunnydale, where he'd grown up with his parents and his older brother Tucker, had been about the same distance from Buffy's home as the Mears house, and it would've made much more sense to wander there in his oblivious walk to pay a last nostalgic visit, considering they were probably going to lose in their battle with the First Evil and everyone was gonna die then. Thinking that over, Andrew reluctantly came to the sad conclusion that he'd loathed his home just as much as virtually every other location in Sunnydale while living here, a weedy kid much more smarter than his peers but also possessing a lifelong sign on his back reading 'BULLY ME!'. No, the Mears house was the only single place in the whole town where he'd been…happy.

Andrew mentally recoiled at that conclusion, only to then unwillingly realize this was the honest truth. Oh, yes, Warren had been a psychopathic manipulator who'd eagerly taken advantage of Andrew's intellect during the creation of various inventions for their stupid villain gang, but even with all the sneering and putdowns by the head of the Trio, that guy had at least paid some kind of attention to Andrew's babblings, something that nobody else besides Jonathan had ever done. Warren had been…encouraging. Supportive. A twisted kind of friendship had been offered by that mentally-unstable young man to someone who had frantically clutched it to himself while firmly ignoring the evidence later of Warren's growing insanity.

Uncomfortable with his thoughts, Andrew shuddered, but he still remained standing there on the sidewalk, staring at a place where he'd had such a wonderful time learning and building and creating and fixing….

A stupendous burst of inspiration then blossomed into the super-intelligent mind of Andrew Wells. He now knew exactly why he'd come here.

Stepping forward onto the overgrown front lawn of the Mears house, Andrew cautiously went to the side fence door, and he carefully pressed several unremarkable points on this panel. Without the slightest sound, the fence door swung open, and Andrew entered the back yard of the abandoned house, which was just as unkempt as the front lawn. He'd only guessed at that standing on the sidewalk, since Andrew hadn't been back here for months, not since he'd fled with Jonathan to Mexico, after Warren…

*_Don't _think about that! Just remember why you're here, to finally help.*

Andrew stepped down the concrete steps of a small landing cut into the ground at the side of the house that lead to a basement entrance, something that was very rare for Southern California, which had in the main no reason for keeping the water and sewer supply pipes below the freeze line. No, there was an entirely different cause for putting an underground story below the house. Standing in front of the door that was missing a doorknob or handle and that had paint peeling off the thin wooden skin covering three inches of solid steel, Andrew ignored the rusty key-lock installed in the panel, knowing this was simply to fool people. He bent down to where an equally-rusty electrical outlet was set in the wall by the door, another misdirection that was also inoperative if anybody actually tried plugging something into this.

Digging a fingernail in the side of the outlet, Andrew flipped the lid of this back, revealing a keypad there, with only two glowing disks on the face of this, rather than the usual ten numerals. Instead, there were embossed on these pair of disks simply the numerals '0' and '1' Andrew closed his eyes for a moment in sheer relief, since he'd been wondering if this was just a fool's errand. Now, with the sign that there was still power on inside, he might actually be able to accomplish his purpose. Opening his eyes again, Andrew quickly tapped a series of numbers onto the keypad: 00110001 00110111 00110000 00110001.

The young man didn't hear anything; instead, he felt the customary short shudder under his feet as massive latches inside the door slid open, with this entry automatically swinging back, as a light came on inside the short corridor now revealed to be leading deeper into the basement. Andrew stepped inside and went on for several paces, past the door which again automatically closed once he was clear. Paying no attention to this, the young man stood in front of another door identical to the first, except the surface of this panel was steel instead of wood, and instead of another key-lock, there was a second keypad embedded in the right-hand wall, also showing the same two glowing numerals as the first keypad. Onto this, Andrew pressed a different code number, this one a bit longer: 00110101 00110010 00110101 00110111 00110111.


	4. Chapter 4

Silently swinging open, the massive blast door revealed the lit interior of the Trio's lair. Stepping inside, Andrew Wells had a rare joyous expression on his face, as he eagerly looked around, seeing things totally unchanged in the enormous fallout shelter that had been built below the house back in the 1950's. An idle Warren had once tried to tell Andrew about the history of the place, how the older boy had found about what was under his home, and how he'd managed to get inside and start fixing it up. Warren had quit in sheer exasperation when Andrew had clearly been bored over the whole explanation; it was enough for the youngest member of the Trio that they had a proper supervillain's lair with lots of machines and computers and other really cool stuff to build anything they could possibly imagine.

About that…an older Andrew now bemusedly shook his head as he walked past the Mr. Fusion generator attached to the side wall, identical in both function and form to the futuristic technology shown in the movie 'Back to the Future'. It had been really fun to come up with that, even though the most challenging part had been in making it actually look like a coffee machine. Unfortunately, they'd discovered that the effects of the Hellmouth meant that dimensional nexus modified physics in its vicinity in such a way that cold fusion would only work within a few miles of the center of Sunnydale High School. Which put paid to any plans of the Trio to sell cheap energy to the world for a zillion bucks and the Playboy mansion, including that place's entire contingent of pneumatic Bunnies. They'd grumpily hooked it up to power the lair, and then had basically forgotten all about it.

Stopping before his very own computer workspace, Andrew dropped into the chair there and idly spun around in it a few times, thinking hard about something called Sunnydale Syndrome. Just the fact that the shelter was totally untouched by anyone, including an enraged Willow Rosenberg right after the death of her lover, mean that the Scooby Gang wasn't as unaffected as they claimed to be by this spell that made people ignore what went on during the night in this California city. From what he'd eavesdropped about Dawn and the others telling the Potentials about life in Sunnydale, that group named after a cartoon dog had the odd habit of defeating their foes (Andrew had always felt a little hurt that the Trio hadn't ever been awarded a 'Big Bad' title, though he knew far better than to complain to them about this), and then simply walking away from the battlefield. Leaving behind anything of their enemies' technology, spoils, and rewards.

Halting his chair in front of his monitor, Andrew shrugged and turned on his computer. Yeah, it was strange, but on the other hand, if they hadn't done that, then he wouldn't have the chance to do this. Cracking his knuckles, Andrew now started expertly tapping the keyboard, sending commands through this that would swiftly bring him the first thing he needed: information. Or, if you wanted to get all military about it, intelligence.

Intently examining what appeared on the monitor, Andrew felt a warm glow of proprietary pride. It looked like the Trio had done a much better job than they knew concerning the sensor net they'd once installed throughout the entire city. Well over 80% of this was still operating, and he could work around those remaining sensors that had failed, were destroyed, or had otherwise been lost. However, Andrew hesitated a bit before he actually shifted his attention to one specific place covered by those sensors. Finally making up his mind, he pressed the correct keys, to then produce on several computer screens before him an outside shot of 1630 Revello Drive, and also more images in living color and sound of all that was currently taking place within the Slayer's house.

Some kind of meeting was over, with everybody scattering back to their living quarters. Nobody looked or sounded all that unhappy, so it wasn't bad news. Satisfied, Andrew started to switch over to his main task, until he hesitated again. A thoughtful expression on his face, the young man now entered a few commands in his computer to record and notify him if his name was spoken by anyone inside Buffy's home. It was the best he could do, since he wouldn't have the time for continuous monitoring of what was taking place there. Andrew was uncomfortably aware that the near-term instances of this would very probably be extremely uncomplimentary regarding himself. Assuming anybody even noticed that he was gone, the first thing they'd probably think was that he'd run out on them. A much kinder explanation for his absence was for him to have been grabbed and killed by Bringers or any other minion of the First Evil.

Andrew leaned back in his chair, and fearfully glanced around the empty fallout shelter. If, if…Warren, or even worse, Jonathan, suddenly appeared next to him, the only living person inside the underground facility just wasn't sure if he'd actually manage to stay sane. There was simply too much guilt and shame about his relationship with that pair. Not to mention the fact that if the First Evil actually showed up, Andrew had totally failed. That was why he couldn't go back to Buffy's house and tell everyone his newest scheme. It was too risky trying to keep secrets from that intangible representation of ultimate wickedness. The only way for Andrew to maintain his privacy was to endeavor to be completely unnoticed by anyone and anything.

Even in his deep terror, Andrew felt the corners of his lips quirk at the absurd thought that had suddenly struck him. He'd spent his whole life trying to be anything but his usual meek, unassuming, timid self, and now that might be the only thing that could save them all: him, the Scooby Gang, the Potentials. The world. Andrew straightened up in his chair, and developing an actual glint of resolve in his eye, the young man now entered numerous commands into his computer, fingers busily working away. Elsewhere in the fallout shelter, an automated machine shop was starting to become equally busy, as it began the process of manufacturing from the designs held in its memory banks the ordered object that needed to be created.


	5. Chapter 5

Several very eventful days later, Willow Rosenberg was in the ceremonial circle, preparing herself for the most powerful magic she'd ever cast. A spell that would transform every Potential on earth into a Slayer. There was no other choice, despite the witch's secret misgivings over changing the lives of thousands of girls, resulting in some cases an outcome certainly not for the better. Unless those young women currently fighting inside Sunnydale High School against the First Evil's minions acquired the superhuman abilities possessed by Buffy and Faith, they couldn't possibly win, and that intangible source of ultimate malevolence would then promptly let loose its hordes of Turok-Han vampires out of the Hellmouth to destroy the world.

Closing her eyes as she began the spell inside the winery where the Slayer Scythe had been embedded in stone for generations, Willow sat tailor-fashion in the center of the circle, at the exact point where that supernatural weapon had formerly been. The Scooby Gang had thought up to a few days ago that they needed to use this misnamed axe itself to cast the spell, until more research had shown Willow that the powers of the Scythe had permeated its resting place, allowing the witch to more easily tap both these energies and the magic of the earth itself. The mystical axe was now with Buffy and Faith during their confrontation with those ubervamps below the high school, and it was hopefully keeping them alive until Willow finished her extremely potent spell.

As she finished the preliminaries of her casting, Willow heard faint footsteps coming nearer to her position deep inside the ruined winery. The redhead frowned as she continued her enchantment. There wasn't supposed to be anyone near when she was working her magic, and Willow had done her best to shield her presence from anybody at all when she'd come here. Everyone else was in the school, and with any luck, they were distracting the First Evil and its remaining minions. Opening her eyes as she paused in the spell, which Willow could presently safely do so, since the energies weren't yet at their dangerous peak, the witch then peered past the glowing lines of the circle's edge into the darkness of the winery.

An instant later, Willow jerked back, as a figure loomed up in the faint light of her enclosure, with that witch's blood then freezing in her veins in total horror, as she recognized him right away. The First Evil had found her, and even though that insubstantial monster couldn't physically affect Willow, that fiend was sure to have more of its Bringers and other minions nearby, which would immediately be summoned to kill her. She couldn't fight these off and also cast the Slayer spell, and there simply wasn't time to do the latter before the First Evil standing there and calmly regarding the witch ordered her death.

Abruptly stepping forward, right through the protections of her ceremonial circle, with its boots coming down with a steady tramping onto her laboriously-drawn runes, grinding these magical sigils into the ground and rendering them useless, the First Evil came closer, until it was right before her and then it abruptly halted in its tracks, the breeze of its passage brushing against her cheek-

Footsteps?

Actually treading upon something?

Bringing a draft of air?

And above all, with every single one of the innumerable humans who'd died in the past that the First Evil could manifest itself as, why in the world would it chose to appear as _him?_

With all those thoughts whirling in her head, Willow then looked up into the steady gaze of someone she'd encountered years ago and had totally forgotten since, who now extended his hand into a palm-up position for the witch to grasp to be helped to her feet, all while intoning, "Change of plans, missy. Now, if you'll just come along, we'll see how your friends are doing."

Numbly, Willow found herself unable to do anything else but to instinctively reach out with her own hand, closing this around a perfect replica of a mature male's hand in temperature, texture, and touch that showed its absolute inhumanness only when the young woman was then effortlessly lifted up, as she hung onto something that had in its bone structure not calcium, but rather something much harder.

It looked like she wouldn't be casting her spell after all.

* * *

Xander Harris didn't know if they were losing, but he _did_ know they weren't winning.

The Bringers that were attacking the school corridor he and Anya were holding still kept on coming in their usual silence, clambering over the dead bodies of their cohort piled up in droves, to then unerringly lunge with their gripped knives at the pair battling side-by-side. Xander thrust forward his battleaxe to smash in a Bringer's face that had its eyes sewn shut, and he then continued sweeping his weapon to take out the other coming at the right. Ignoring this, Anya used her mace to shatter the head of the last Bringer facing the woman, only to have another three of the voiceless beings come scrambling over the mound of corpses. The creature furthest on the right was the closest, so Xander exhaustedly swung his axe blade at its head, to have his remaining eye widen in horror as that Bringer brought up its arms to successfully grab the weapon at the moment it cleaved the monster's skull, managing to yank the axe out of Xander's grip as that dead enemy slumped to the floor.

Anya was busy with her own foe, parrying its knife, while the middle Bringer that had been bringing up the rear made its way down the pile of the dead. Halfway there, this creature stepped on another Bringer's body that immediately slid down the slope, carrying the attacking monster along in an unstoppable onrush that had its knife aimed right at Anya's heart.

Xander didn't even think about it. He hurled his own unarmed body forward, smashing into the Bringer and driving his bare fingers as deep as he could into that thing's eye sockets, feeling the cords sewn there snapping as he ripped with both hands right into the brain, causing the Bringer to contort in death even as the creature shoved its knife into Xander's chest, right up to the hilt.

Falling to the ground as darkness engulfed him, Xander dimly felt the floor under him starting to tremble, but what really caught the last notice of the dying man was the berserker shriek coming from above him.

Aud of Sjornjost stood over the body of her beloved, and she screamed at her enemies the final words this world would ever hear from her, in a language that had not passed her lips for a thousand years:

"Ást ok líf  
Af dauða er dýrð  
Andi ríkir  
Faðir, vér nálgask  
Valhöll!"

The entire building was now shaking, but that went unnoticed by Aud as she savagely pummeled the next wave of her foes, sending Bringer blood and bone and flesh flying everywhere. She reacted at once to the next adversary that jumped over the mound of corpses, swinging her mace right at his head, not caring at all that this newcomer was much bigger than any Bringer, didn't have his eyes sewn shut, and had his mouth open as if he was about to say something to her. The woman's spiked metal club smashed with deadly force into the man's left cheek.

CLANG!

Aud felt as if every bone in both of her hands had just shattered. Uttering an agonized scream, she helplessly let go of her mace and stumbled back a pace away from Xander, shaking her stinging hands as she felt tears fall down her countenance.

Politely catching the dropped mace in mid-air before it fell onto the wounded man lying on the floor, the unconcerned stranger with a gobbet of flesh dangling from his lower face and revealing what was under there now calmly leaned this weapon against the wall of the school corridor, and he briskly informed Aud, "That was really not necessary, missy. Now, let's look at your companion. Medical assistance has been summoned."

Staggering over to the wall next to her mace, an open-mouthed Aud pressed her back against this and felt her knees go weak, as the man(?) with shiny metal under his skin bent over Xander, gently turned him onto his back, and pressed both of his hands against the Sunnydale native's wound, not directly touching the knife itself, but still managing to staunch most of the bleeding. Sliding down along the wall onto the floor and ignoring the blood and other fluids that now soaked her lower limbs, Aud continued gaping at the stranger, who never changed his expression even though polished steel glittered there from the ceiling lights where a good part of his face was missing. Several seconds later, two other strangers also hurdled the Bringer pile and landed on either side of the first unfamiliar person. All three of these people were absolutely identical to each other, having exactly the same features and otherwise being like peas in a pod.

With quick, efficient motions, this new pair unloaded their medical equipment strapped onto themselves, and they set to work. Without speaking a single word to each other yet with their hands together blurring in expert action, this trio now skillfully removed the Bringer's knife from Xander, clamped, stitched, and bandaged his massive wound, and set up a double plasma IV feed into both arms, while strapping an oxygen mask over his slack face. At the end of this, the triplets froze into absolute stillness, intently watching their stabilized patient, as a nonchalant voice spoke from behind them.

"You know, Xander, this is actually a good thing for us. Since you'll already be in a hospital bed, I won't have to break your legs to keep you from running away again when we have our wedding right there. Of course, I'll have to wait for you to completely heal up before you can give me more orgasms, but we'll have our whole life together for that, anyway."

Since this was not a command, question, or request, the three strangers ignored the words of the young woman who'd spoken, as they instead waited for the battle below the school to end so the trio could evacuate their patient to a proper medical facility.

* * *

Buffy fought on relentlessly with the Scythe, easily cutting down Turok-Han vampires just like that actual farmer's tool could harvest grain, Spike at her side during every second of this, and she knew that they'd lost.

Down in the gigantic cavern of the Hellmouth, she and Faith were holding their foes back merely because these fanged opponents could only come to the Slayers one or two at a time along the narrow crest of the rocky ridge connecting the immense plateau beyond to their own, smaller flat space directly below the opening leading upwards into the Sunnydale High School. As the two Slayers moved in their battle dance, the Scythe was passed back and forth between the pair, spinning through the air until the woman catching this weapon would then transfer the magical device's momentum into a hack or slash that destroyed another onrushing vampire. Out of, oh, maybe a couple thousand more impatiently awaiting their own chance to finally kill those Slayers.

From their own plateau where Buffy and Faith were occupied in their futile conflict, across the ridge was a much bigger plateau which was absolutely _seething_ with Turok-Han standing there, their cragged faces showing savage snarls and taloned hands shaken across the gap between the two plateaus, where the ridge and also both sides of the separate high ground fell into the immeasurable depths of the cavern as absolutely perpendicular cliffs. This chasm was too wide for any of the vampires to jump across, so these monsters could only press up closer together and inch forward across the ridge, as those in front went up against the pair of Slayers and got dusted. Every now and then on their side, an occasional Turok-Han at the edge of the opposite plateau got jostled off the rim of their cliff, to then plummet downwards into the chasm's blackness. The really lucky monsters managed to grab onto the jagged wall of the cliff in their descent and hold on, to then eventually claw their way back up. The more unfortunate vampires simply disappeared, falling completely out of sight.

The being standing next to Buffy seemed to find this quite funny, as Spike thrust his hands into the pockets of his beloved leather jacket, all while chortling in his English accent, "Look, love, there goes another one. If that happens again a couple of hundred times, I think you might actually win…a couple more seconds for this dimension to exist before hell on earth literally happens."

Buffy grimly disregarded that last sneering remark to instead dust one more Turok-Han before tossing the Scythe to Faith, after which the blonde Slayer shifted into position to meet her next opponent, in the process stepping towards Spike. As her body easily passed through an intangible form, the British vampire pretended to blow a loving kiss into Buffy's ear, causing that young woman's bleak face to tighten further, but otherwise she seemingly ignored the First Evil's sadistic antics.

It had happened less than a minute after they'd first gone up against the elder demons, coming down into the Hellmouth cavern with the Potentials behind their leaders to remain at the rear of their plateau, waiting for Willow's spell to work that'd finally allow those young girls to do more than to shoot an occasional crossbow bolt past the trio of battlers holding the line against the Turok-Han. Buffy hadn't even seen it, but over all the roars and growls and shouts of everyone, the sound of a taloned hand plunging into undead flesh to rip out an unbeating heart from Spike's chest had managed to reach the ears of that Slayer.

Only the fact that Faith was using the Scythe then kept the Turok-Han from promptly overwhelming the superhuman women, as this Boston native now went into a battle frenzy that cleared off the ridge before herself and a numb Buffy standing there and staring at the small heap of dust that had been an English poet over a century ago. Hewing, hacking, and slashing, Faith managed to hold back the onrushing horde of vampires, including the one that had finished off Spike, but while she decapitated that specific Turok-Han just before it got its hands on the other stupefied Slayer, Faith also swung her left boot as hard as she could to kick Buffy right in that blonde woman's ass.

Jarred back into her senses, a shocked Buffy now heard from in front of herself Faith screaming over her shoulder, "Fight now, mourn later!" as the brunette Slayer chopped off the legs of her nearest foe and then flipped the Scythe back, afterwards punching another Turok-Han off the ridge. Without thinking Buffy caught the mystical weapon, and her face transforming into a mask of absolute rage, that Slayer started her own savage slaughter, which only intensified when a few seconds later, an elated First Evil had materialized itself in the company of the pair of fighting women in its newest manifestation, happily taunting Buffy every chance it got.

As she and her warrior-sister held back the Turok-Han, Buffy still despairingly thought that even if Willow managed to successfully cast her spell to turn the half-trained girls behind herself and Faith into full Slayers, all that this would accomplish would be to increase the body count before the final defeat of the daughters of Sineya. The mystical amulet that Spike had been wearing in the hopes of finally destroying the entire mob of Turok-Han in the cavern had disintegrated along with the rest of that blond demon's body, and the Scooby Gang had nothing else on hand that might win their war and save their world.

Continuing in their hopeless fight, simply because they could do nothing else, Buffy and Faith managed to clear a small space before them on the ridge, helped by the abrupt halt of the Turok-Han in their advance. As the Slayer duo also stopped in their tracks, both gasping for breath, these young women began to feel the cavern floor beneath their feet inexplicably start to tremble. Even more incredible, the First Evil in its Spike form immediately shut up right in the middle of its endless derision, looking in absolute shock at something behind Faith and Buffy, who then heard from back there sudden screams of fright and panic from the Potentials.

Even though this meant ignoring their vampire foes who'd surely take advantage of this distraction, the Slayers simultaneously spun around, already fearing that somehow they were going to be attacked in both their front and rear at the same time. In the very next second, the Called women froze into total immobility, to just stand there gaping at the utterly unbelievable. In Buffy's whirling thoughts, one single thing managed to stand out, taken from a Weather Girls song:

*_It's raining men._*

Indeed, a solid column of male bodies was plummeting down from the hole in the cavern ceiling that lead to the high school above. Tightly packed together in their descent, these falling men separated only when they landed onto the cavern floor, their immense weight making the whole place shudder and quake, but with every single one of them effortlessly landing upon their feet, to then immediately leap away so that the next descending man could find their own open space to make their matching jumps. All of these men's bounds carried them right towards the Turok-Han.

About a dozen of these new arrivals shot forward in long, horizontal dives, using far-beyond-human strength to skim just above the cavern floor directly at Buffy and Faith, who promptly did their own frantic lunges out of the way, falling onto the ground, as the expressionless men sailing through the air passed by the Slayers and plowed like human missiles into the advancing Turok-Han. As the two women rolled over on the cavern floor to stare in disbelief at this, they saw every vampire on the ridge get knocked off their feet, with this collision rippling back further into the mob of monsters occupying the other plateau.

Looking up from where they were lying on the ground, the Slayers now watched with ongoing incredulity as what looked like over a hundred men now traveled in vast arcs through the air in their impossible leaps from their starting point at the plateau held by Buffy and Faith, handily sailing over the chasm, to then land in the middle of the Turok-Han occupying the far plateau. And in many cases, dropping right onto one or more of these vampires, which were the first to be promptly exterminated.

That specific word was the only way to describe what happened then to the First Evil's minions, as hands stronger and faster than possessed by any Slayer ever called now tore off fanged heads, easily smashed into reinforced chests to rip out vampire hearts, and dismembered seemingly without effort any Turok-Han within reach of those mysterious strangers, with every one of these men being absolutely identical to all of the others.

Still continuing to watch the mind-boggling battle currently taking place over there, the attention of Buffy and Faith was abruptly distracted by a cleared throat coming from behind and a male's pleasant voice then addressing them, "Hello there, young ladies. Can I give you a hand?"

Snapping their heads around, the Slayers now saw another of those duplicates standing there and gazing downwards at the pair of women lying there, with this man seemingly in his late forties, dressed in casual clothing, and having a friendly face. In Faith's personal opinion, if she'd seen him anywhere else rather than here and now, that woman wouldn't have even bothered to notice him, instead thinking this guy to be just an ordinary human out of a coupla billion.

However, the strangled sound Faith heard coming from Buffy at that exact moment make the Boston native hastily glance over there, to see her sister Slayer's mouth drop open, and then Buffy Summers managed to choke out a single flabbergasted name.

"_Ted?"_


	6. Chapter 6

"He's the robot my mom dated."

Faith blinked. Then, she opened her mouth, only to close this again, as the Slayer thought over that abrupt statement. Finally, Faith suggested, "'Kay, Sunnyhell's creepy enough for somethin' like that, but could ya give me more'n the TV Guide summary?"

After sighing deeply, Buffy continued watching the battle raging over at the far plateau between the Turok-Han and the Teds, until the young woman wearily went on, "A few years ago, mom met a guy here, a Sunnydale native named Ted Buchanan, and after dating him a few times, she brought him over to our house to meet me. It got pretty strange then - for one, he acted like a fifties-style television dad and treated me like I was a little girl - and it wound up with us Scoobies checking him out. We found he'd been married before a few times, and that he'd also outlived all of his wives, which made us really suspicious. Not to mention that he survived falling downstairs in our house and breaking his neck, only to visit us the next day, claiming that nothing had happened. Well, eventually we discovered that back in the 1950's, the original, human Ted built a robot duplicate of himself. We never found out exactly what happened after that to the first guy, but robot Ted took over his life, even going so far as to marry a couple of women in his efforts to pass himself off as a human."

A flabbergasted Faith stared at Buffy determinedly gazing straight ahead. The Boston native finally managed to choke out, "Nobody fuckin' noticed something so weird like that at _all?_"

A tinge of black humor managed to appear in Buffy's reply, "Like you said, Faith, this is Sunnydale."

"Fair 'nuff. Go on."

Buffy shrugged, still observing the battle and ignoring everything else. "There's not much more to tell. We found the bodies of Ted's wives in his house, and right after that, I took him down, clobbering him hard enough to turn him off for once and all. Mom saw what I did, but her Sunnydale Syndrome managed to wipe away her memories of everything, and we pretty much forgot all about it too, afterwards. I think Willow said a few days later that she was going to study how the inventor of that robot managed to create something so lifelike nearly fifty years ago, but I don't remember her ever following up on it."

Buffy then glanced over at her right, to glower at the two figures standing there, and she icily directed her words to the man on the left appearing absolutely identical to the other person next to him. "So, you've been really quiet now for the last few minutes, which is a heck of a change from your usual motormouth. Did something happen to finally shut you up?"

Turning away from his own study of the diminishing conflict ongoing before themselves, the First Evil in his Ted form beamed at the angry blonde, and he said in a very familiar voice, "Well, missy, I was just enjoying how those kiddies over there are beginning to understand that they're gonna lose, anyway," as he waved his ghostly arm through the body of the immobile robot Ted by him, with the insubstantial fiend now gesturing at the Potentials fearfully staring over at the far plateau.

The two Slayers listening to that managed to keep their own expressions under control, as these superhuman women inwardly became a bit gloomier. Because, it was, for once, the absolute truth.

The robot Teds across the cavern chasm were still destroying scores of Turok-Han vampires every second, but the numbers of these eradicated monsters were being easily made up by swarms of even more minions coming out of crevices at the back of the cavern and rushing into the battle. Something that couldn't be said for the mechanical figures steadily working away in their demon purge, until they were overpowered one by one in surging groups of vampires closing in upon all sides to then viciously grab and tear into multiple pieces of metal and plastic those silent fighters, hurling these fragments down to the cavern floor and then rushing off to the next fight.

The only thing keeping the Turok-Han from sweeping away at once all of their non-organic foes and then storming the ridge against the Slayers, was, curiously enough, these fanged creatures' sheer numbers, which often impeded the demon attackers in their assaults, as they bumped and collided with each other, while the robot Teds kept on wrecking havoc, as per the orders of their creator. Still, the eventual outcome was clear to everyone there on the smaller plateau currently guarded by the single Ted android unemotionally standing next to a smirking First Evil.

That intangible fiend maintained its twisted expression of malicious glee upon its ordinarily-pleasant features, successfully managing to keep its brief disquiet from being shown to those abhorrent feminine examples of humanity over there. Still, the First Evil reassured itself, even if it _had_ been taken entirely by surprise at the recent events in the cavern, its victory was certain. After all, if there'd been any more of those bizarre, life-like machines other than the hundred or so that'd already appeared, they'd surely have shown up by now-

Frightened yelps from the Potentials suddenly attracted the attention of the Slayers and unfortunately also the First Evil. That small group of terrified young girls which had failed to become true Slayers in the last few minutes, despite all the plans and assurances of their leaders, had retreated along the small plateau to then stand with their backs against the wall of the rocky cliff that went up to the gap in the cavern ceiling opening into the Sunnydale high school. Now, every Potential was frantically scattering away from their previous location, as a single man dropped through this aperture downwards to the cavern floor.

Landing lightly upon his feet, this robot Ted stood there like a statue instead of promptly imitating the others earlier leaping into the battlefield on the other plateau. This immobility was instantly justified, as another robot Ted plummeted down to alight with absolute accuracy upon the first Ted's shoulders. Right after that, it looked like nothing but a circus act, as several more Teds immediately followed after to do the exact same thing, resulting in a fantastic finale of a pillar of a half-dozen robots balancing on each others' bodies, reaching from the floor to past the hole in the cavern ceiling.

The bizarre metaphor of a circus performance continued to stick in everybody's minds, particularly when the Ted on top of the pillar now lifted his arms, to then bring down in those limbs currently holding his new burden taken from the upper lip of the ceiling gap, while also bending forward to lower that into the careful grip of the Ted below, with this handing down carried on Ted-by-Ted, finishing with the last Ted at the very bottom of the pillar gently keeping an unsteady body upright on their extremely wobbly feet.

Everyone there - Slayers, Potentials, and First Evil - at once recognized the new arrival, but one more bizarre event then took place to distract them all. A figure again leapt from above, to plunge through the air and gracefully land next to the Ted-pillar and their recent passenger. Held in the strong grip of the robot supporting his duplicates upon this machine's shoulders, this man didn't even flinch at the sudden appearance of the small woman next to him; instead, as Ted let go of his creator, Andrew Wells simply leaned over, to be quickly grabbed by the unknown female just before he fell flat on his face.

A stunned crowd of people (and one other) watched in silent fascination as the young woman, about the same age as Buffy and Faith but older than the Potentials, half-walked and half-carried Andrew towards the Slayers and the First Evil, with that former member of the Trio lurching and staggering every step of the way. When this strange pair finally stopped in front of their goal, Buffy opened her mouth to say something, only to be promptly cut off by an utterly exhausted snarl.

"Couldn't you have waited just _one_ more day?"

A taken-aback Slayer stared in absolute astonishment at Andrew glaring at those before him, his trembling head swaying from side to side, as if barely under control, just like his entire sagging body that the woman at his side was propping up in her barely-successful attempt to keep him from collapsing. Which might happen at any second now, a horrified Buffy realized, as she gazed further at the total wreck of the young man she'd last seen just a few days ago.

*Did he ever sleep at all since then?* Mentally asking herself that in dismay, the appalled Slayer then catalogued everything else: the hollow eyes retreating into their sockets, the gaunt face that had its lower half covered in beard-stubble with flecks of food caught in the bristles, plus more food and sweat stains upon what looked like the very same clothes she'd watched him walk off away from her after his inspiring (if somewhat incoherent) speech back then. Not to mention that Andrew Wells totally _stank._

Wrinkling their noses, Buffy and Faith unconsciously edged away in tandem, both truly regretting their heightened senses at this exact moment. Andrew didn't seem to even notice this, as he kept his burning gaze fixed upon what the astonished Slayers now understood whom exactly the geek had just addressed.

An extremely startled First Evil.


	7. Chapter 7

A very slow, malicious smile now appeared upon Jonathan Levinson's features, as he snickered, "Hey, Andy! Bro, I can see you've been a busy little beaver, what with you finally using all the robot stuff Warren snatched from that dude's house, once Miss Vamp-Layer there and her buddies took off without even cleaning up there. You remember how much he gloated about how stupid they were, right?" The First Evil in its new manifestation as another member of the Trio now happily roared with laughter.

His face absolutely blank as he slumped against the young woman propping up his drained body, Andrew simply continued staring at the image of his former best friend, seemingly oblivious to the cruel taunts of this person that the geek had been tricked into murdering. Not seeing the shamed response it'd really been hoping for, Jonathan merely lifted an amused eyebrow, as the First Evil then inquiringly glanced at the expressionless girl at Andrew's side. Another wicked grin then flashed into existence, only this time upon someone else's face.

Standing there, Warren Mears proudly regarded a still unresponsive Andrew, as the insane murderer of Willow's lover cackled with delight, "Oh, this day is just getting better and better! Hey, Katrina, baby, good to see you again, even if the dork here had to build you from scratch! I gotta say, you're looking really fine, now that your tongue isn't sticking out and your eyes aren't bulging like they were after I finished strangling you!" A truly vile expression of glee then appeared upon Warren's countenance, as he shot a triumphant look at where Buffy and Faith were witnessing all this.

Hearing that, a horrified Buffy had her attention diverted from the blank-faced woman holding up Andrew. That Slayer had thought a few moments ago that she'd seen this stranger before, but Buffy couldn't pin down the when or who, until the First Evil's sadistic remarks had revealed that woman's identity. Now, both warrior women stared at that monster, to then see even more cruelty presented, as if it were rubbing everyone's nose into it, when the First Evil's form slowly _shimmered_ like heated air arising from a blacktop road during the middle of a summer's day, and it now revealed itself to be the identical twin of the woman currently supporting Andrew.

Eyes glittering in pure malice, Katrina's pretty features twisted with spite as she spat out to those among their little group who shared her gender, "Hey, you cunts, did little Andy-Pandy over there ever tell you that he helped Warren dispose of my body?" At seeing the shocked looks suddenly appearing upon the Slayers' faces, the First Evil merrily giggled, to then continue with its jeering. "Oh, he was so deliciously under Warren's thumb-"

"Yes. I did that."

Even the First Evil was a bit disconcerted by the flat, rasping admission coming from Andrew, particularly when that exhausted young man now pulled himself away from his companion's support, to then stagger over and stop in front of the intangible representation of a murdered girl, with the other impassive version following along after to stand by the swaying geek now looking down into the monster's hateful features, and continuing in his lifeless voice.

"I helped Warren do all that and more, and I knew it was wrong every second, and there's no excuse for me over anything. I'll face judgment for that someday, and in the meantime, the only thing I can do is to offer whatever atonement I can make, using all the incentives I've got. Including every single reason over the last couple of weeks that _you_ provided, all the pain and death you caused to people I knew." For the first time in his dull monotone, a spark of true emotion now appeared in Andrew's voice and features, as he now hissed into the First Evil's surprised face a very contemptuous question.

"Do you have any idea at all just how _stupid_ you are?"

As the others, including an insubstantial monster, gaped at Andrew, they now watched how this man lifted up his right hand, holding three fingers raised, as he went on.

"One, you pissed off a Sunnydaler, born and bred on the Hellmouth."

The third finger came down, leaving the middle and index fingers.

"Two, that dimensional nexus, which by the way we're currently right inside, can cause really weird things to happen. To people, to machines, to anything."

The middle finger came down, leaving a single digit left up on Andrew's hand.

"And three point one four one five-"

The sheer incomprehensibility of Andrew Wells starting to recite the value of pi kept even the First Evil off guard long enough for the robot Katrina to perform her own _shimmer _as she then lashed out with her right arm, fast enough to confound even Slayer reaction times. Though, a stunned Buffy and Faith were now able to witness how a struggling Katrina was abruptly pulled by the merciless fingers gripping her neck into the clutch of the other Katrina, whose set features never changed the slightest during all this, including when that machine glanced over towards her creator.

"-nine," finished Andrew, who then instantly pointed with his still extended index finger right at the middle of the chasm between the two plateaus. At once, robot Katrina lithely flexed her legs, leaping up and outwards in a graceful arc, as that female android took the still-struggling First Evil now stuck in its current form along with her, to pause for a moment at the apex of her bound, until she and her extremely unwilling companion then plunged into the darkness below, well past even the vision of Slayer eyes, as they vanished forever into whatever existed at the bottom of that dimensional abyss.

Though, another heightened sense shared by Buffy and Faith was immediately battered by the immense howl of anger produced from the teeming crowd of Turok-Han vampires over at the other plateau, as those monsters saw their leader disappear. Snapping their heads around, these superhuman women saw to their horror that now only a dozen or so robot Teds remained intact and still fighting, but these machines were currently formed in a thin, forlorn line just beyond the point at the far end of the ridge connecting the two plateaus.

As a vast surge from the enraged vampire horde rippled towards the last stand of the Teds, the single representative of these robots at their own location, that both Buffy and Faith had totally forgotten about, now shouted well beyond any level of human lungpower: "LADIES, FOLLOW ME!"

Again, both Slayers hastily turned their heads, only to see their Ted running away from them in a blur of inhuman speed, carrying a slumping Andrew in his arms. Sharing with each other a quick glance, Faith and Buffy then took off together in their own fastest sprint, right at where the pillar of robots was still standing below the hole in the cavern ceiling. The furious roaring from the army of Turok-Han at seeing their prey escaping seemed to literally press against the backs of the fleeing Slayers.

Looking ahead through eyes nearly closed shut against the windblast from her dash, Buffy felt her heart almost stop at seeing something missing. The blonde opened her mouth to scream, above the ever-present noises of the charging vampires, at the Andrew-carrying Ted arriving at the point below the opening into the high school. "WHAT ABOUT THE POTENTIALS?"

"ALREADY GONE!" shouted back that Ted, just before he jumped straight up with his human burden, to then disappear through the hole where the Potentials had been lifted into by the Ted-pillar a minute ago. Relieved by that answer, Buffy had another worry abruptly appear in her mind, as she eyed the distance up to the ceiling gap. It was a little too high, even for her best leap-

As one, every single Ted forming the robot pillar waved at Buffy, to then hold out their right hands in unison in a clear gesture for her to grab onto them at the highest point of her jump. All of their left hands were also out, pointing at where-

"BET YA A BEER I GO HIGHER THAN YA!" bellowed Faith directly into Buffy's ear, just as they reached the pillar and used all the Slayer strength of their leg muscles to rocket upwards at the opening in the ceiling and to a presumed safety. Buffy wasn't thinking about that at this point, though; instead, she was thoroughly pouting as she grabbed the right hand of the topmost pillar-Ted, since that robot also brought up his left hand about two feet more in height in order to grab Faith's higher grip, with that brunette Slayer triumphantly cackling as she shoved down with her arm to fly through the ceiling gap in her agile ascent.

Buffy followed her sister Slayer an instant later, to land on her feet as lightly as Faith did. Both women now whirled around at the lip of the circular pit that led down into the Hellmouth. Faith and Buffy then backed up a step, as two other Teds easily shoved the massive stone lid that weighed tons back into its former position covering the hole. Just before the top slid completely back into place, the Slayers managed to have one last glimpse below into the cavern, witnessing how the Ted-pillar collapsed into individual robots, as these machines started running forward to join the last of their comrades in a doomed last stand_._


	8. Chapter 8

Nursing her bruised knuckles, Buffy pressed her face against the shirtfront of the Ted carrying her, as she tried not to throw up at the sudden, dizzying shifts of the sprinting robot. She'd reflexively lashed out at this machine when it had scooped her up in the library, just like the other robot had grabbed Faith, although that particular Slayer had either been taken completely by surprise, or the brunette otherwise had the actual sense to refrain from punching someone in their literally iron-hard face.

As both robots carrying their human burdens moved with blinding speed along the still corridors of Sunnydale High, occasionally leaping over the Bringer corpses scattered throughout the hallways, Buffy tried to distract herself from a heaving stomach and an aching hand by reflecting that the last time she'd been moving nearly as fast as this inside not-so-dearly-beloved SHS, it had been the previous school building just before it'd blown up, and she'd been in the middle of being chased by a giant snake.

What the blonde Slayer had left behind a moment ago in the library containing the Hellmouth was something much more dangerous.

Just as Buffy's thoughts reached that worrisome conclusion, the robots burst out through the entrance of the school, in a flat leap that carried them at least a hundred feet past the front steps before they hit the ground again, where they _really_ started to run. Still keeping her face sheltered from the rushing wind of their passage, a stunned Buffy estimated the machines carrying herself and Faith were moving at least twice as fast as the Slayers could have managed on their own, so, okay, maybe there was a genuine benefit to being lugged along in such an undignified manner. Besides, it didn't last all that much longer, scarcely less than another minute.

As the Ted carrying her now skidded to a stop, Buffy lifted her head to warily look around, and then she frantically pulled herself out of the robot's arms at the same time it quickly let go of the young woman. In the small Sunnydale park a couple of miles from the school, Buffy rushed towards a specific person in the small group of people standing there, mostly clustered around a backless park bench currently occupied by an hunched-over man seated there. Ignoring Andrew and everyone else as she gathered up Dawn in her own arms, Buffy frenziedly hugged and kissed her sister that had obviously survived all of today's perils. The younger Summers sister also clutched Buffy hard while returning her relieved kisses, accompanied by muffled squeaks of pain starting to come from Dawn.

When Dawn's yelps grew louder, Buffy finally relaxed her grip, only then noticing her sister's left arm in its sling and the mottled bruising on the same side of her face, culminating in a magnificent black eye. As a chagrined Buffy opened her mouth to apologize, she was cut off by Dawn's quirked smile and quick comment, "Tone down the Slayer strength, sis, will you? It isn't all that bad, but a gorilla hug doesn't really help." Dawn then became more serious, as she stared with absolute anguish at Buffy. "Did Spike-"

"No." As her sibling's face crumpled at this dejected confirmation, Buffy glanced around, and her heart sank at how few survivors there actually seemed to be right here and now. Turning back to a sniffling Dawn, Buffy then heard from her some slightly better news than the Slayer had really expected.

"Buffy, the really hurt people are at the hospital, along with the dead." Dawn had to swallow hard, before she could go on. "Three more, all Potentials. Xander was the worse off of the injured, but one of the Teds told me a few seconds ago that he just got out of surgery, and he's in serious but stable condition. Anya's with him- Well, for some reason, she keeps calling herself Aud-"

Listening to all this while again looking around at the remaining Potentials and everyone else huddled there, a saddened Buffy physically interrupted Dawn by tugging her sister along, as the Slayer now stepped over to the group closest to where Andrew was sitting on the park bench. There, standing behind the man blankly staring down at the ground, Willow was embracing a sobbing Kennedy, while a rather flummoxed Giles with a bandage wrapped around his forehead and wearing his own sling was using his working hand to continue gingerly patting the shoulder of the brunette woman leaning against his front, her arms loosely wrapped around his waist and her head tucked under his chin, as Faith refused to let go of the Englishman.

At any other time, Buffy might have giggled at the dismayed glance of sheer appeal then shot towards herself by the Watcher, but things were too serious for that at this moment. Instead, as she joined her friends, Buffy spoke directly to Willow continuing to hold close to her the weeping girl. "Wils, the amulet that Spike was wearing, it got destroyed before that thing could work, and in spite of everything else, there's still an army of Turok-Han under the school. Can you do anything?"

Her face paling at that appalling news, Willow then reluctantly answered, "I'm…not sure, Buffy. It depends on how much time I have. But even if I cast the Slayer spell, do we really have enough Potentials left to contain those vamps? If they get out of the Hellmouth and then wait inside the school until dark, they could overrun us and Sunnydale…and then the rest of the world."

While everyone there in the park considered this, back in the school itself, the stone cap covering the Hellmouth was continually shuddering from the furious blows of the fanged monsters that had clambered up the cliff at the rear of the cavern, as they then clung there, to begin pummeling with all the strength of their free arms against the bottom of the massive lid that was starting to develop severe cracks throughout, as it began to weaken.

Below their fellow creatures busily working away, the rest of the Turok-Han waited with implacable patience, as the acres of vampires covering every single inch of the plateaus stood ready to bring doom to the world. Shifting in his position, one of the fiends shoved away with its taloned foot a scrap of debris lying there on the cavern floor, but the demon otherwise ignored this portion of metal and plastics that had been a few minutes ago the lower torso of a Ted robot, that was now completely scattered in pieces throughout the cavern, just like the rest of these machines that had finally lost their battle.

As Buffy was about to open her mouth to reluctantly order Willow to start her world-spanning spell, a rasping male voice cut off the Slayer's words. From where he was sitting in his cowering position on the park bench, a downcast Andrew refused to lift up his eyes, as he said what had taken all the geek's courage to finally express to the woman standing behind him.

"Willow, I'm sorry."

"_What_?" blurted out the witch, with enough incredulity in her voice that caused Kennedy to stop crying and lift her tear-stained face to look up at Willow staring in disbelief at the seated man fixedly examining the ground, until Andrew hoarsely went on.

"Wh- what I did, what I helped others do, taking away someone you loved, as much as I loved somebody else and killed them too, I'm sorry. I know you hate me, and I deserve that. II just wanted to make it up to everyone, but to you, really, 'cause you've got someone now, and I did my best to help…" Andrew trailed off in his piteous apology, to then sob once, as the silence from behind his back continued, which could only mean his sincere regrets were being spurned.

Actually, Willow was staring in wonder at the wretched man before herself, to then direct her marveling gaze at the young woman in her arms, as Kennedy blinked, unsure of why the red-haired witch she loved was looking at her like that, until Willow then tenderly leaned forward to gently kiss the other girl upon her forehead. Smiling at her lover, Willow then firmly said, "Andrew, can you help some more?"

Eagerly nodding, as his heart almost burst at this sign of forgiveness, Andrew called out to the nearest robot, "Ted!" In a blur of motion, this android of the several clustered around the small group of humans now dashed over, to abruptly stop in front of the hollow-eyed man on the bench. Squinting through his total exhaustion at his creation, Andrew husked, "Give me a status report on Operation Terry Fermy."

In a steady monotone, Ted recited, "The signals from the remains have been plotted against the seismic scans, and the chances for success within the set parameters have been calculated at 97.867%."

Their sudden bewilderment over what they'd just heard only increased, particularly the people standing near somebody they'd previously disregarded now witnessed Andrew wearily shrugging, to then wryly say, "I suppose that's as good as it'll ever get in Sunnydale." Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Faith, Willow, Kennedy, and the rest of the Potentials then listened to Andrew rasp another order to the robot, "Hold out your right hand."

The Scooby Gang and their comrades simultaneously stared in disbelief as Ted obediently performed that bizarre command, reaching out to present his right hand palm up, within arm's reach of his creator. Beginning to sway as everything in the last week started to catch up with him, Andrew drew upon his last scraps of energy to carry out a last-minute precaution against an intangible opponent, as the young man lifted up his own right arm with his extended index finger, to then place that digit against the smooth surface of the robot's manufactured epidermis, and Andrew now jerkily tapped out a message there:

Dit-dah-dah-dah dah-dah-dah dah-dit dah-dit dah-dah-dah.

Of all those breathlessly watching from behind Andrew, only Rupert Giles recognized the Morse code, but even that Englishman had no idea exactly who or what 'JONNO' was supposed to be.

At the instant of the concluding tap that Andrew's finger sent out in his heartfelt act of contrition for his dead friend, an electronic signal that was more than capable of passing through the Hellmouth was then received by the items hidden inside the ultra-reinforced fragments of the robots scattered beneath the feet of the Tuork-Han vampires just about to escape from the cavern. Obeying the instructions previously programmed into them, the cold-fusion power sources that had provided the energy to operate the Ted androids at their superhuman levels now simultaneously shut off the magnetic shields inside the small nuclear batteries.

Over a hundred miniature suns now burst into fiery life throughout the Hellmouth cavern.


	9. Chapter 9

A thunderous rumble then shook the entire city of Sunnydale, forcing virtually every Potential in the park to their knees. The Slayers easily maintained their balance, keeping those people closest to them on their feet. For Buffy, it was her sister, and Faith also grabbed hold of Giles and Willow, with that witch firmly keeping her grip onto Kennedy. The Teds didn't even budge, and Andrew held tightly onto his park bench, while a massive cloud of smoke and dust now billowed upwards from the spot where the Sunnydale High School was located.

That past tense form of grammar only became even more apparent, when the ground under the shattered buildings there began to collapse, as the incandescent walls of the cavern that a few moments ago had contained a presently-vaporized army of Turok-Han vampires slumped inwards, slowly bringing down thousands of tons of rock and soil and dirt, intermixed with a California higher-education facility and various other structures, that finally filled up to the very brim this large underground hollow.

In due course, the even-bigger dust cloud created by that unnatural geological catastrophe blew away, leaving the small group upwind of this in the park to at last see for themselves what was now before them all. A wide, deep crater consisting solely of earthly rubble now covered at least a dozen city blocks, with there being no sign whatsoever of any houses or other buildings that had previously been standing in that location. Including a certain high school.

A few minutes later, a swaying man on his bench was being badgered by incessant questions from the people currently surrounding him. Their present behavior might have been considered a wee bit ungrateful by any neutral observer, except that simply by looking at him, all there could easily see that Andrew was going to conk out any second now, and unless they wanted to wait during the next several days for him to finally wake up from his forty thousand winks, they'd better get their answers now.

"-possibility of radiation, Andrew?" anxiously asked Willow.

Blearily glancing over at where seemingly to him there were two redheads holding two young girls in their arms, Andrew mumbled, "It was designed to be a clean blast, just heat and light. Any outgassing should be contained by the upper topsoil. Besides, when I personally finished off the first Teds and then had them start building each other, I put a few of them with radiation detectors fairly close to the estimated crater edge, and they haven't found anything-"

Faith butted in on the geek-talk, as that brunette demanded what she really wanted to know instead. "Never mind that! What 'bout the fuckin' First Asshole?"

"Uhhhh," burbled Andrew, peering through his nearly-closed eyelids that felt as if they weighed a ton apiece, and trying to identify the pair of knees that were apparently addressing him. "I constructed a phase inverter that suspended valences in that entity's level of reality, immobilizing quanta at the dimensional quarkian plane."

The abrupt silence caused by everyone's sheer incredulity over that incomprehensible statement was soon broken by Dawn's admiring comment, "Hey, Andrew that has to be the finest piece of technobabble I've ever heard, worthy of a real ST-TNG episode. Geordi would be so proud."

Buffy felt like her head was about to explode in utter annoyance, with the pulsing of the veins in her temples only increasing at seeing the pleased smirk appear on the cracked lips of the young man on the park bench due to being approvingly compared to one of his television heroes. Just barely keeping her temper, that Slayer gritted, "Can you be a little bit more clearer?"

"Well, it's so much easier to use mathematics rather than actual language in order to explain it. If you could give me a whiteboard and a couple of colored markers-" Andrew hastily stopped in his enthusiastic lecture, since he actually managed to sense through his total exhaustion the fangs and claws beginning to protrude from the female-shaped blur over there.

After discretely tightening his lower sphincters, Andrew tried again, in the most basic words that would allow his tongue to keep from being ripped out of his mouth. "Um. Ah. Okay, then. It's gone. It's stuck, both wherever it is, and what it's like now. I, uh, invented something that….froze the First Evil in its current form, which you saw, right after the robot Katrina used my machine built inside her to also become exactly intangible and then grabbed it just before I ordered her to jump off the cliff with it."

Ignoring the others there who hadn't been in the Hellmouth cavern and were now intently listening as they learned more about what they'd recently been told in various confused explanations, Buffy warily asked the most important thing, "Is it dead?"

"It wasn't exactly alive in the first place- Ah, no. I couldn't think of any way to end its existence, really. The best I could do was to, um, stick it down there, since as long as my robot is in the, lessee, presence of the First Evil, the phase inv- gadget working inside her will keep it from teleporting anywhere else, and it can't change into another form."

Giles then spoke up, an evident note of worry in his voice. "Andrew, do you mean that the First Evil is contained only as long as your, er, device keeps operating? How long will that be?"

Andrew jerked up his head that had wearily fallen forward, making his chin bounce off his chest. Straightening up as much as he could in his tired slump, as the young man then respectfully answered someone he admired very much. "Oh, I built Katrina from the most durable materials I could find, Mr. Giles, and she's got the biggest cold-fusion power cell that would fit inside her, completely topped up. Best I can figure, with a couple of decades either way- Four hundred years. After that, it'll be somebody else's problem."

Everyone on their feet in the crowd around Andrew sucked in their breaths at that welcome news, but right before anybody could actually begin to express their absolute delight, an husky voice urgently said, "Hey, wait a sec, alla ya!" Faith stared at where Andrew was beginning to tilt over in his seat, and she rushed through her hurried question. "Look even if that shit can't get free, turn inta anybody else, or get help from anyone, it's still got one helluva mouth on it. What if it talks your robot into lettin' it go?"

Faith, Buffy, Willow, Dawn, Giles, Kennedy, and the others now blinked at the quietly-triumphant smile slowly appearing on Andrew's drained features, as he then said the last coherent statement to come from him for the rest of the week. "Nope. A minute after I started reciting pi, Katrina also began calculating that irrational number, and the robot's hardwired to keep doing this instead of anything else until she reaches the end, which won't ever happen. So, even if I somehow find her again and order her to stop - or if someone who looks and sounds exactly like me does that-"

The cumulative yell of victorious glee from all there over that final bit of insurance against their intangible enemy reverberated throughout the Sunnydale park. Relieved hugs were traded among everyone, including an ordinarily reserved Englishman, who'd decided that for once he'd bloody well celebrate, along with the quick appearance of a few tears among themselves, as people there remembered those who couldn't be with them at this proud moment.

A solemn Dawn was one of those, as in their embrace together, she pressed her damp cheek against Buffy's to then whisper into her sister's ear, "Buffy, what are we going to do now?"

As Buffy fiercely hugged Dawn back, the Slayer opened her lips to begin her answer, only to be promptly cut off by a truly unique din, as the excruciating sound of something best described as a buzz saw slicing through a working set of bagpipes now vibrated through the flinching air.

The entire group in the Sunnydale park abruptly froze in their various celebrations, as they then stared in astonishment at where a certain young man was now limply stretched out upon his back on the park bench, eyes firmly closed and mouth wide open, his slobbering tongue lolling out the side of his face, all while the slumbering geek snored at his full, window-shattering volume.

Taking a deep breath, to then say something she'd never thought possible, the older Summers sibling told Dawn, "I dunno, sis. Why don't you ask Andrew over there? He seems to be running things now." Buffy finished off her last words by idly waving an indicating hand towards the snoozing form of Andrew Wells, hero.

* * *

Author's Note: Andrew's passcodes into the lair:

00110001 00110111 00110000 00110001 = 1701

00110101 00110010 00110101 00110111 00110111 = 52577

Aud's death-song:

"Ást ok líf  
Af dauða er dýrð  
Andi ríkir  
Faðir, vér nálgask  
Valhöll!"

"Love and life  
From death, glory  
Spirit reigns  
Father, we come  
Valhalla!"


End file.
